‘Mixing of the unmixables’: the 1949 Causeway Green ‘riots’ in Birmingham

Windrush migrants in Birmingham

On 22 June 1948, the Empire Windrush docked in Tilbury, Essex. It was not the first ship carrying a Caribbean workforce to arrive in Britain in the postwar period; the Ormonde had landed a year earlier, in 1947, with 110 Jamaican workers, including ten stowaways. ⁷ However, the landing of the Windrush received significantly more media attention, with the story reported, for instance, in the local Birmingham newspapers.

The Birmingham Mail carried the headline ‘Jamaicans seeking work in Britain’ on the day the ship landed. It included the now-familiar quote, ‘some think the streets of Britain are paved with gold’, which reveals a huge amount about how well Britain had sold the idea of the rich mother country to her colonies. The article also features the large subtitle ‘Conditions at home “pretty bad”’, although, in its coverage, the paper (predictably) fails to make any link between British colonialism and the state of the economy in Jamaica. ⁸

The first story about the Windrush with more local resonance appeared a day after the docking of the ship. This story, and the way in which it was represented, were particularly pertinent to the events that would transpire at Causeway Green. It briefly mentions an interracial couple who met at Elmdon Airport in Birmingham, around the time of the war, and later arrived in Tilbury on the Windrush. Interracial relationships were clearly unusual in late-1940s Britain, and the article is arguably printed as less of a ‘feelgood’ story about wartime love, and more of a ‘curiosity’. ⁹

On 24 June 1948, the Birmingham Gazette revealed that out of the 492 people who came aboard the ship, ‘Five Jamaicans who landed in Britain on Monday after a voyage of more than 5,000 miles, decided that the best work centre in the country was Birmingham’. The subtitle, however, was significant: ‘Work – but no homes.’ The disparity between labour need and community acceptance is well highlighted by the journalist, who reported that, ‘after three hours they decided it was the most inhospitable city they had ever been in’, a remark that was reiterated by a Mr Simon George Rowe, who had served in the RAF: ‘I did my best for the mother country and I came over here expecting to better myself, but Birmingham people are the most unfriendly I have ever met. There seems to be a great colour bar here.’ Many of the men who came on the Empire Windrush had served in the armed forces during the second world war. ‘They are all ex-servicemen and are all skilled tradesmen, which Birmingham urgently needs, but because they cannot find anywhere to live in the city they may be forced to return to Jamaica.’ ¹⁰

A quote from another immigrant further highlights the dichotomy between finding work and finding accommodation: ‘Our intention in coming to Britain was to find work. We have found work but we have nowhere to live.’ According to reports, the two organisations to help the New Commonwealth immigrants were the Ministry of Labour and the Universal African Improvement Association (reminiscent of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association founded in 1914). That there was such an organisation already in Birmingham reveals the presence of a black community in the city, prior to the docking of the Empire Windrush.

Postwar, of course, because of the Blitz, there was a massive shortage of housing. The UK was in the process of both rebuilding areas of cities and clearing slums through its new ‘council housing’ schemes. The pressure on housing allowed private landlords to exercise the most overt discrimination, with signs like ‘No blacks, no Irish, no dogs’ frequently seen in their windows. All those newcomers without family and friends with whom to stay until they got a foothold had no choice but to stay in the government-provided hostels. They might all have had to do the same type of work – that locals did not want or need to do – but that did not make for solidarity and friendship when it came to a social life outside work. ¹¹

According to the records of the NSHC, disturbances were reported at their hostels from 1946 onwards. The West Bromwich hostel, home predominantly to Irish and West Indian tenants, witnessed a disorder on 25 December 1946, instigated by the Irishmen’s dislike of West Indians dancing with white female members of staff at the Christmas party. ¹² Letchworth Hostel, Hertfordshire, saw a disturbance in late February 1947, following ‘a “round robin” signed by 350 white trainees demanding the instant removal of all black personnel from the centre’. There, it was ‘believed that the initiation lay with a white extremist and in the melee iron bars were thrown as weapons and some cuts and bruises ensued’. ¹³ The Greenbanks hostel in Leeds faced trouble on 25 January 1948, where, in the words of the manager J. E. Taylor, ‘The cause appears to be racial prejudice – black men associating with white women’. ¹⁴ Disturbances had already been recorded there in September and December 1947. The Sherburn-in-Elmet hostel, Yorkshire, records a disturbance on 30 November 1947, as well as a number of other ‘outbreaks of one kind or another’. ¹⁵ Three months later, problems arose at Pontefract Hostel, Yorkshire. In September 1948, Weston-on-Trent Hostel, Derbyshire, was the site of disturbances, and the hostel at Castle Donington in Nottingham saw a disturbance on 1 August 1948. Again, interracial dances were salient: ‘[t]here had previously been trouble at a dance when some of the Irish resented the Jamaicans’ advances to white girls (mainly E.V.W.s on the staff)’. ¹⁶ In spite of the acknowledgement in each of these cases that the West Indians were not the aggressors, the ensuing official correspondence, in every instance, included the idea of transferring the West Indians elsewhere. In the communication about the incident at Castle Donington, the idea of setting a quota for West Indian residents, with a maximum of three in any NSHC hostel, was mooted. And this despite the fact that there were also hostilities between different European groups, especially those from the Baltic. ¹⁷

The Causeway Green riot

In Birmingham, after the war, many of the West Indians, who numbered around 100, were similarly accommodated by the Ministry of Labour in overcrowded hostels. These migrants were put up in places such as the Causeway Green hostel (which took fifty), the Salvation Army hostel, Rowton House in Highgate Park and the Free Shelter at Winson Green. The largest hostel in the city apparently refused to take black residents and another imposed a maximum quota of six. ¹⁸ Of the approximately 800 men staying at the Causeway Green hostel in August 1949, 235 were Poles, eighteen EVWs, 235 Southern Irish, fifty Northern Irish, sixty-five Jamaicans, 100 English, Scottish and Welsh.

The breakout of violence at Causeway Green on 8 August was preceded by a number of incidents at the hostel. The report of W. L. Swan, the regional welfare officer, entitled ‘Racial disturbances at Causeway Green hostel: Jamaicans and Poles’, initially describes a ‘slight scurry’ between these two groups after a dance at the hostel on 3 August 1949. This was followed by ‘a more serious affair’ over the attentions of a woman, which escalated to involve ‘a crowd fighting with bottles in the main reception hall’ on 6 August. The document then describes the Jamaicans as withdrawing, only to return ‘armed with miscellaneous weapons’ and ‘throwing bricks etc.’, before the arrival of the police. Some damage was done to hostel property, including broken chairs, tables, window frames and panes of glass. Eighteen people, including a policeman who received a blow to his head requiring stitches, attended the sick bay for treatment. The next day, residents informed the hostel manager that the Poles intended to retaliate in the canteen at midday. The police were called, but, excluding a ‘skirmish’ on the road between three Irishmen and two Jamaicans at 11pm, no incident took place.

The riots began in earnest on 8 August 1949. At 8pm, the Poles commenced an assault on the sleeping block, occupied mainly by Jamaicans, with weapons including sticks, stones, razors, factory-made knuckle-dusters, iron bars, heavy files and lengths of cable. Indeed, the Poles had been organising themselves for some time, as some of these weapons had been prepared at their place of work during the day, and there were also reports of their numbers being bolstered by reinforcements from other local hostels. Serious fighting developed, with many missiles, including large lumps of concrete, bottles and whole bricks, being thrown at and into the block. Most of the other occupants in the hostel ran to the air raid shelters, as the fighting continued in and around the building and on the main road, with some of the Jamaicans, who were chased by the Poles, attempting to seek shelter in private homes.

Every policeman in Oldbury had been assembled at the hostel to deal with the trouble. In their eventual round-up, the officers cordoned off all the Jamaicans in the heavily damaged sleeping block. The superintendent of police asked for the immediate removal of all sixty-five Jamaican residents to other hostels, in part because of his worry that the fifty officers available would not be able to keep the situation under control. The management, although in general agreement with the suggestion that the Jamaicans be moved, deemed it impracticable at the time and asked the police to maintain guard all night. Two Jamaicans and two Poles needed hospital treatment and one policeman was injured. ¹⁹

In the Birmingham Gazette story of the events, headlined ‘Jamaicans, told to leave riot hostel, stay put’, an NSHC official is quoted as saying: ‘We don’t want to kick out the Jamaicans, but they are in the minority. There are over 200 Poles in the camp, and only 65 Jamaicans. We couldn’t possibly find accommodation for all the Poles.’ ²⁰ This article highlights the biased response to the riots, which echoed the one at the Castle Donington hostel, in Nottingham, a year earlier. The report of W. L. Swan into the disturbance noted that, ‘on the advice of all parties it seemed most desirable for all of the Jamaicans to be removed before the Poles and British Isles residents returned from work in the evening’. The regional welfare officer continued: ‘It was known that all of the “white” residents, supported by the residents’ committee and, also, the residents in the district in a petition to the Chief Constable and to the Mayor of Oldbury, intended to clamour for the removal of the Jamaicans.’ He also added that: ‘Whilst the disturbances with the Jamaicans have mainly affected the Poles, emphasis, by this time, had been given to the wider question of “blacks” versus “whites”.’ ²¹

The officer’s categorical assertion that ‘all’ of the whites sought the removal of the Jamaicans was not entirely true, as the Birmingham Gazette makes clear: ‘Many other hostel residents are incensed that the Jamaicans and not the Poles were told to go.’ One resident said, ‘It was the same when the Scotch and the Irish lads were in the camp. The Poles always wanted to pick a fight with them.’ Ex-artillery sergeant Richard Strauss, a recent resident in the hostel, added:

The Jamaicans are, for the most part, a quiet crowd, but the Poles won’t leave them alone. Apart from calling them names, and openly insulting them in the camp, they take offence when local girls dance with Jamaicans. The Poles seem to think that, although they are in England, they can carry on with their own traditions and customs at the expense of other people. They do not seem to mix with anybody. Few of them learn to speak English and they are insanely jealous of the Jamaicans.

In the face of the hostility towards them, and the official position that they should leave, the Jamaicans, as the story described it, ‘stay[ed] put’. Although offered railway warrants to anywhere in England, according to the press article, ‘Most of the Jamaicans last night refused to leave the hostel’. The article featured a picture of musician Sammy ‘Banjo’ Walker, one of the sixty-five Jamaicans who decided to stay. As he described it:

I had just returned from Highfield Ballroom, Moseley, where my coloured quintet, the Hot Swing Combo, had been playing, and didn’t realise what was happening when I went to my room. I had settled down for the night, and the next thing I knew was that a crowd of Poles had broken into my room. They beat me up and broke the furniture. ²²

Amazingly, as the Daily Mirror reported, too (albeit with the racist opening line ‘Chocolate-coloured Sam Walker …’), Walker still went on to perform the following night at the Birmingham Dance Hall. ²³

In the Birmingham Gazette story, Jamaican Horace Halliburton also emerges as an extremely articulate spokesman:

We are little better than nomads, and consider it very unfair that, though we are British, we are the people to suffer. We have put up with a lot from the Poles, and did not start the recent fights. The Poles brought reinforcements from local hostels, and we were outnumbered by four to one.

The fact that the West Indians would lose their jobs if they were moved was made all the more significant, given Halliburton’s following statement about the difficulty of finding work: ‘It is not easy for us to find work in England. Even though I hold a London Matriculation Certificate and can speak three languages fluently, I still find it impossible to get a skilled job – because I am a coloured man.’ ²⁴

The difficulty of finding work would likely have been compounded by the bad publicity that surrounded the event. The Polish presence at the other hostels in the region also served to influence the Jamaicans’ decision to remain at Causeway Green. The regional welfare officer’s report underlined the Jamaican view that Poles had come from West Bromwich and Wolverhampton to join the rioters on the previous evening and the West Indians’ fear of retaliation, should they be relocated there. ²⁵ In part, officials recognised this and hoped to transfer the Jamaicans to the Wyken hostel at Coventry, where they thought there would be the least likelihood of reprisal from the Poles. The Gazette article, however, shows that Halliburton was, again, critical of this idea: ‘The authorities have arranged for us to go to Coventry, but there are Poles in the hostel there, and they won’t give an undertaking that there will be no trouble.’ ²⁶

Nonetheless, there was a mixed response to the attacks among the Jamaicans. Some left that very evening: ‘They packed their bags and demanded a police escort. As they walked through the main gates of the camp they were followed by catcalls and jeering from other residents.’ ²⁷ The vast majority of Jamaicans, who did remain, spent the following Tuesday at the hostel, wary of making the journey to work with the tension still simmering. Come the early evening, the other residents had begun to return from work and started to congregate in groups, with the whole of Oldbury’s police force remaining on guard. By this time, more Jamaicans, in ones and twos, came forward to ask whether they could be led away. The regional welfare officer agreed to issue them with notes to obtain free rail warrants and said that arrangements would be made with the Ministry of Labour and Colonial Office Welfare to assist those Jamaicans who might wish to go to other towns. A few went further and asked for tickets back to Jamaica. After the issue of the notes (thirty-five in total), most Jamaicans wavered in their intentions and proposed to leave the hostel the next day after collecting their wages, insurance cards and attending hospital. ²⁸

Tuesday night also saw the arrival of a coalition representing a number of black groups. These included the Liverpool and Merseyside Coloured Community Centre, based at Stanley House, Liverpool; The Voice, a newssheet published in Liverpool; the Association of African and People of African Descent; and the League of Coloured People. The report of the regional welfare officer states that the groups’ general view was that the Jamaicans should be housed together in one hostel. The League had in mind the conversion of a large house, which it had managed to acquire in Birmingham, to accommodate twenty or thirty residents. The report also states that they supported the idea of segregating the Jamaicans into one sleeping block, which was already largely the case, despite ‘a small number of “coloureds” – the better type [being] interspersed in other blocks’, and the objection to the idea among the Jamaican tenants themselves. ²⁹ This idea was certainly opposed by Horace Halliburton, who wrote a relatively long article in the Birmingham Gazette the following Thursday in which he cited a different reason for the disturbances: ‘Fundamentally it boils down to two main factors – accommodation and employment.’ Under the headline ‘Segregation’, he continued:

The story of Causeway Green riot really started at the beginning of the year when the management suddenly decided to segregate the coloured inhabitants from the Polish and British. This created considerable resentment amongst the West Indians. They felt that they had been singled out and herded together because other people had found them unsuitable to live with. Nevertheless, their protests had no result and a special section was allocated to coloured men. The problem grew as the months passed by. Life among coloured and white men has its own particular difficulties, but the segregation only amplified these and soon it became apparent that something would happen. Instead of mixing with their Polish and British acquaintances, my countrymen began to shun them. In turn, we were shunned by the white men. Many Birmingham people have automatically placed the cause of the trouble on the question of women friends but although minor arguments and petite jealousies may have arisen over girls coming to dances at the hostel. I would like to point out that this is only a very minor cause of dissension.

Arguing that, ‘In my opinion a man has to live with his neighbour before he really gets to know him properly, whereas splitting the races leads to suspicion and estrangement’, Halliburton continued by relating struggles to find work, which he underlined with examples of the discrimination that he faced, as well as saddening tales of his experiences of racism on the streets of Birmingham. As he writes, ‘I am heartbroken when I hear mothers point out a coloured man to their children and say: “I’ll set the black bogy man on you if you are not well-behaved.”’ ³⁰

Local residents lost no time in voicing their opposition to the affray and sent a petition the very next day to the council, to Police Superintendent Bache and Arthur Moyle, the local MP. The petition, signed by thirty-six residents in the district, drawn from Wolverhampton Road, Brook Road and St Matthew’s Road, placed the blame, in no uncertain terms, on the Jamaicans:

Great distress was caused to the inhabitants of the private houses, near the huts which were attacked. The coloured men climbed into the gardens and attempted to enter the houses. In one case where a coloured man did enter a house to seek shelter from his pursuers there was a small baby and two aged grandparents. ³¹

It ended with a call for the ‘coloured element’ to be removed or the ‘hostel closed’. This was met with a response directed by the minister of labour and National Service, arguing that the suggestion ‘would be tantamount to the imposition of a “colour bar” which would be contrary to the policy of His Majesty’s Government, and impossible to justify in a Commonwealth in which a large proportion of its citizens are coloured’. It also drew attention to the fact that transferring the men to another hostel would create unemployment. ³²

By 10 August, it had become clear that ‘The Jamaicans, as a body did not want to leave Causeway Green’ and ‘Very few intended to proceed to other towns, notwithstanding earlier requests’. ‘The controller had agreed that no coercion should be used for those Jamaicans who were not willing to leave, but that ‘we should provide facilities for any who still wished to do so’. ³³ Clearly angry at these developments, the chairman and secretary of the local residents’ committee met with representatives of the NSHC. They criticised the way in which the hostel administration and police had handled the affair and ‘pressed for eviction of all the Jamaicans, and considered that there would be no safety, particularly for the 40 women residents, plus staff until that course was taken’. ³⁴ The Jamaican response was to emphasise the resentment shown to them by most local people. One spokesman argued that:

They were British subjects, most of them having fought for this country and had been brought here or permitted to come by the British government. When certain types of women were friendly with German P.O.W.S. there was not much reaction. There was no resentment against foreign workers but as soon as a coloured man was seen in company with a white woman much resentment was in evidence and insults relating to their colour and parentage were shouted around. ³⁵

It had also become clear that the police did not intend to prosecute any of the offenders, alleging insufficient evidence. They were asked to continue to maintain law and order and warned publicans against supplying too much drink to ‘coloured’ and ‘foreign speaking’ workers. The police did suggest that four Jamaicans face eviction from the hostel. A spokesman for the Jamaicans reported that, in the view of the majority of the Jamaicans, the four should face removal. However, in a further show of resistance to the prejudiced response, the report of the regional welfare officer noted that: ‘the eviction notices given to two of them on the 13th, “caused such merriment as to imply that their recommendation by their coloured representatives was phoney”. It was implied they were selected as it was known they had secured other jobs.’ In addition to the four Jamaicans, a Polish resident, described as ‘usually present when trouble is afoot’, was transferred to another hostel, with similar action proposed for several other Poles. ³⁶

Between November 1948 and August 1949, there had been a number of evictions at the hostel carried out by manager Flann: nineteen Irish (mainly for drunkenness); eleven British (for disturbances of one kind or another); six EVWs (for disturbances of one kind or another); ten Jamaicans (mainly for having women in sleeping quarters); and one Jamaican (at the request of other Jamaicans).

It is unlikely that the Irish, British and EVWs were not taking women into their sleeping quarters as well. Indeed, the Jamaicans had noted the absence of any opposition when German prisoners of war were seen with local women. If this was the case, then it would appear that the Jamaicans had been unfairly targeted. In fact, the Jamaicans had complained about discrimination from the manager before, with Flann claiming that he had been threatened by Jamaican residents during the disturbance and that bricks had been thrown into his bungalow while his wife and child were inside. In spite of his claim to have shown ‘tolerance and sympathetic understanding’ towards the ‘coloured’ men, Mr Flann seemed to have a vested interest in their removal and had been heard to say that he would ‘be unable to remain if the Jamaicans are retained’. ³⁷

Introducing restrictive quotas

The idea of a quota, initially raised after the disturbance at Castle Donington Hostel in Nottingham, promptly came back under discussion. A figure of three suggested then was replaced with the equally arbitrary, and slightly less restrictive, figure of twelve. The policy, which sought to impose a limit of ‘not more than twelve’ Jamaicans at any one hostel, was set out in the minutes by the chief administrative officer of the NSHC, Mr Handyside, of 11 August 1949:

Ultimately after further discussion it was suggested by us as a basis for agreement that a limit should be fixed to the number of West Indians to be accepted as residents at any hostel, and that in any case where that number had already been exceeded action should be taken by the Ministry of Labour as early as possible to bring that figure down. This was accepted in principle and we left the ministry’s officers in no doubt that in our view the maximum should be not more than 12. In the first instance Mr. Bindloss said that we would at once instruct our managers not to accept more than 12 West Indians at any hostel without the authority of the Head Office of the Corporation and that we would ascertain forthwith the exact distribution of West Indians at all our hostels at present. Sir G. Myrddin Evans said that on their side Mr Stewart would pursue with their regional controller the early reduction of their numbers at Causeway Green where the major difficulty lay at the moment. ³⁸

However, with sixty-five Jamaicans present at Causeway Green prior to the riot, and many refusing to move on afterwards, it was clear that twelve was a particularly ambitious number. Official policy at Causeway Green, therefore, was to reduce the number of Jamaicans to thirty. ³⁹ In a letter dated almost two weeks later, an official, who described the atmosphere at the hostel as ‘subdued even if smouldering’, wrote, ‘any attempt to reduce the numbers of Jamaicans at Causeway Green suddenly, other than by gradual running down process, would spread rapidly from hostel to hostel with most unfortunate results’. ⁴⁰

On 21 August, a special service took place at Birmingham parish church at which the Jamaican activist Horace Halliburton was present and was joined by Wledystew Rozycki, a university-trained draughtsman now working as a polisher, as a representative of the Poles. ⁴¹ Reports of the service reflect the paternalistic, unconscious racism of the time: ‘In fluent English, Mr Halliburton, an out-of-work machinist, said […] Around them a choir of Englishmen sang “The Church’s One Foundation” and the two men forgot their loneliness.’ The Reverend Bryan Green, apparently unreckoning of the cold shoulder so often presented in British pews at the time, declared from the pulpit, ‘There is a problem here, one of our most crucial problems – the relationship between races. If the church takes a lead she has got a gospel for the age.’ ⁴²

In spite of the quota and the church service, the council and local residents continued to agitate for a number of months. In November 1949, a meeting was held involving the local mayor, Alderman Good, the local MP, Arthur Moyle (who had obtained special leave of absence from Prime Minister Clement Attlee to be present), Police Superintendent Bache and Swan, the regional welfare officer. Moyle described the residents as ‘still scared stiff’, although he and other members of the council emphasised ‘that no racial feeling against the coloured residents remained’. However, and in stark contradiction to this claim, the sub-committee of Oldbury Corporation still felt that: ‘The hostel generally was a blot on the communal and social life of the district and the health of the community: the sooner the coloured workers and indeed the whole hostel could be removed the better the council would be pleased.’ The notes also, sadly, allege that, ‘in one week six applications had been made for the acceptance [presumably into local authority-controlled homes] of illegitimate coloured babies’. It continued, this time shifting the onus onto the white women who engaged in relationships with black men, by stating that: ‘The August outbreak had been entirely due to the presence of women of an undesirable class.’ ⁴³

‘The rule of twelve’, brought in three days after the disturbance, soon came in for criticism. It could potentially do ‘damage to that good name [of the NSHC] if grounds are given for the accusation of colour prejudice’; it was disapproved of for its ‘arithmetic’, as the hostels varied in capacity ‘from over a thousand places to under a hundred’; ⁴⁴ and it was disparaged on ‘policy’ grounds, as it frustrated efforts to direct labour to undermanned industries. ⁴⁵ It came in for additional criticism after a dispute over the placing of a thirteenth ‘coloured man’ in a hostel. ⁴⁶ J. G. Stewart, a principal officer at the Ministry of Labour and National Service (MLNS) in London, was one of the first to call for a quota of 10 per cent of the total capacity of a hostel, with a maximum ceiling of thirty individuals. ⁴⁷ This policy was underscored by a self-assured colonial view of the British capacity to rule, reminiscent of the speeches of imperialist statesmen (such as Birmingham’s own Joseph Chamberlain), made half a century earlier. ⁴⁸ One fairly typical memo, this time written by the executive director of the NSHC, R. H. Bindloss CBE, read:

We should, by this time, know something of handling people of various races and our experience regarding Jamaicans is that, so long as they are in a definite minority of any one nationality, they are fairly easy to handle and we have found that, with certain exceptions, they can live amicably with other white races. Individually, some of the West Indians are decent, well-behaved men but, and this is really important, collectively and when inspired by the presence of sufficient numbers, they can and do become arrogant and insulting. Theoretically, and for those who have not to live amongst them, there should be no reason why all races, white and black should not live together in complete harmony. But, no amount of wishful thinking will alter the fact that it does not a mean a thing to the Poles or the Southern Irishmen that these Jamaicans are British subjects, in respect of whom no colour bar exists. Whether it is acceptable or not, it has to be faced that Poles, together with Southern Irishmen, do not and will not mix with West Indians. It is not in question that we, as a corporation, seek to discriminate against West Indians, but nothing we can do will alter fundamental racial antagonisms.

If, therefore, it be the policy of the Ministry that we should house the different types of nationalities at our hostels which I have detailed in writing to Sir Guildhaume-Myrddhin-Evans, then in our view, it is quite wrong to risk the breakdown of hostel administration in certain areas by the short-sighted compulsory mixing of the unmixables. ⁴⁹

The position of the MLNS and the NSHC, born out of their knowledge and experience of ‘handling people of various races’ with ‘fundamental racial antagonisms’, was clear: the numbers of West Indians should be kept as low as possible and, in contrast to the views of Horace Halliburton, segregation was key.

Thus, in line with J. G. Stewart’s position, the rule of twelve was expanded on, and hostels could: 1) accept ‘coloured’ men up to 10 per cent of the total capacity of an industrial hostel, subject to a maximum ceiling of thirty; 2) if regarded as potential trouble spots, have a lower ceiling of twelve black people; and, 3) be considered not suitable for West Indians at all. A letter on ‘The proportion of coloured workers in industrial hostels’, again written by Bindloss, explained the allocation:

As regards statement (1), this is where the maximum number of coloured residents are to be housed, following on from your request that we take 10% of the maximum capacity of each hostel, up to a figure of 30. In statement (2), our proposal, to take in only a limited number of coloured residents, is more or less for the following reasons:- (a) trouble experienced previously with West Indians, or (b) large number or large proportion of women residents or (c) the British residents (which in this case includes Southern Irishmen) in a minority. In such cases, we think the allocation of 12 beds only reasonable and is in the best interests of the hostels. The reason for statement (3) is that practically all the hostels in this statement are predominantly Polish or, such as Dunstable, where there are special circumstances. ⁵⁰

The document still identified Causeway Green as problematic, with a statement that the hostel had seven people over the limit and a call to reduce the figure to thirty. Therefore, employment became dependent on where the West Indians could be properly housed and looked after, even in spite of calls from industry to relax the ceiling (as there are such calls today on the ‘immigration cap’).

Challenges to the quota

Like the placing of a thirteenth black resident under the ‘rule of twelve’, there soon emerged problems with the placing of black workers whose number breached the new ceilings. Much of this opposition came from the regional offices and representatives of business, eager for more cheap labour. A letter of 7 March 1950 informs us that the railway company at Worcester was prepared to accept thirty-two ‘coloured colonials’ and that the local hostel manageress ‘agreed cheerfully’ to house them, before being barred by headquarters on the grounds that this would breach the ceiling of thirty. The memo continued: ‘The manageress has had no experience of black-men and does not know apparently what she may be in for.’ ⁵¹ This piece of writing also noted that the regional office had ‘no sympathy with the NSHC attitude’.

One week later, the Divisional Coal Board made a similar request to waive the rule at the Accrington Miners’ hostel. Again, this application was promptly rejected by headquarters, with one item of correspondence reading:

North-Western Region have written to me to say that recently they have been successful in getting the National Coal Board to accept a few coloured colonials. They find, however, that placing in coalmining is limited by the N.S.H.C.’s rule that not more than twelve coloured workers may be accommodated in one hostel. North-Western Region have experienced considerable difficulty in supplying surface workers at Burnley and Accrington and have placed a fair number of E.V.W.s in this work. They say that if the N.S.H.C. had been prepared to accommodate additional coloured colonials in their hostels in these areas, they could have supplied and the National Coal Board would have accepted more coloured men. ⁵²

A response, written by Chief Administrative Officer A. Handyside, to a request to admit more black men to Nettlebed Hostel over a year later had not lost any of the NSHC’s perceived urgency:

Frankly, your request is somewhat embarrassing. It is all very well to ask that the rules be relaxed in one particular case, but if they were to be relaxed in this instance presumable [sic] similar relaxation would be sought in every other case where any of your Regions had difficulty in finding accommodation for these men.

You will remember that very serious troubles arose in a number of hostels through violent racial antagonisms, and that it was only after exhaustive examination and discussion that agreement was reached as to where the coloured men could be housed and how many could be accepted. The nature of the problem has not varied at all. Poles and Coloured men do not mix, and in the agreement of January 1950 forty-four hostels were listed as inappropriate for the admission of coloured workpeople. Nettlebed is one of these; its population is quite predominantly Polish. ⁵³

By the mid-1950s, much had begun to change. The early 1950s saw EVWs gradually released from employment restrictions ⁵⁴ and the hostels programme reduced in 1954, with the remaining hostels progressively closed, until the NSHC was finally wound up in 1956. ⁵⁵ However, this did not happen without the question of the quota coming back under discussion, especially in May 1954, with the arrival of a new ship carrying migrants from Jamaica. The Midlands and South-West Regional Offices raised the issue of increasing the quota with headquarters in London. One official, representing the Midland’s Regional Office, wrote:

About 650 Jamaicans arrived in this country on the 1st May and a further 300 are now on their way. The majority proceeded to London but a substantial number particularly of the second batch are destined for the Midlands. Placing negotiations with a number of firms in South Western and Midlands have reached an advanced stage but the offers of employment do not always coincide with the areas where we have suitable hostel accommodation available. ⁵⁶

The letter proceeded to make a request that the ceiling on numbers at the Stonehouse hostel be raised, from twelve to twenty-five; the Thorny Pits hostel, from twelve to seventeen; and, in the Midlands, that the Willenhall Road and Tenscore Street hostels’ quotas be raised, from thirteen and twelve respectively, to 10 per cent of total capacity, up to a ceiling of thirty. More controversially, however, the author also made a request that the Causeway Green ceiling be increased to forty, as there were already twenty-five black workers in residence there. He argued that, ‘after this long period of relative peace we can now safely relax a little in order to meet the particular difficulties of the coloured problem in this district’. He did, however, acknowledge that ‘the proposal to lift the quota at Causeway Green is rather more venturesome’ than the others.

In response, the ceilings on numbers at the Stonehouse and Thorny Pits hostels were raised to twenty-five and seventeen, respectively. However, the numbers of Poles, EVWs and Italians at the Midlands’ hostels, plus the expected arrival of twenty Italian women at Willenhall Road, meant that the suggestion of a higher ceiling there was rejected. ⁵⁷ In contrast to the argument that the ‘relative peace’ at Causeway Green should provide a reason to house more West Indians there, A. Handyside wrote: ‘It is true, as you say, that the number of incidents has been quite small in recent years, but that is only because of the restrictions which were placed on the intakes of the people in question.’ ⁵⁸

Requests to raise the limits at other hostels continued throughout the final couple of years of the NSHC’s existence. These included appeals by British Railways (BR) to allow fifteen Jamaicans to stay at the Stanbridge Road hostel in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, which was considered unsuitable for coloured workers ‘because it has a large foreign population and they fear racial trouble’. ⁵⁹ The NSHC objected to BR’s appeal, arguing that, ‘in the present climate of running down hostels the first approach to placing coloured workers should not be to get them into hostels’. ⁶⁰ The steelworks at Gorseinon enquired about raising the ceiling of fifteen at Morriston Hostel, South Wales, which had eighty empty beds, as they were keen to recruit thirty West Indians ‘following their satisfactory experience with the half dozen they already employ’. ⁶¹ The NSHC pointed out that the current quota at Gorseinon was not being used and, until it had been full for about a month, they should not make any further approach. ⁶² Westinghouse Brake, a company that manufactured railway air-braking and signalling equipment, made a request to increase the ceiling at Thorny Pits Hostel (again), this time to over thirty. ⁶³ The Cambridge regional office enquired about raising the ceiling at the Baldock hostel, which had approximately 100 vacant beds, and where lodging accommodation was said to be ‘unobtainable’, from thirty to fifty (still, it was argued, within 10 per cent of total capacity), as a result of demand from the local steel founders. ⁶⁴ In response, A. Handyside of the NSHC stated, ‘we dislike it intensely’, and cited the perceived need to keep the numbers of West Indians down to avoid them becoming ‘arrogant and aggressive’. He also mentioned the presence of Poles, EVWs and Italian residents, as well as seventy-seven women at the hostel, ‘all the ingredients required for a flare-up’, as further reasons. ⁶⁵ The Fletton Brick Industry also sought to raise the ceiling at the Yaxley hostel in Peterborough, which was previously considered unsuitable for black workers because of its predominantly Polish composition. ⁶⁶ In response, the NSHC made the mild concession of increasing the ceiling to twelve. ⁶⁷

Conclusion

A study of what happened at Causeway Green in 1949 certainly puts paid to the accepted wisdom that 1958 marked the first postwar ‘race riots’ in Britain, but it also puts paid to the dominant notion that such riots, in the first half of the twentieth century, were economic in nature and predominantly over access to jobs. ⁶⁸ The Poles and Jamaicans shared an experience of migration, a similar position in many of the least desirable jobs in industry and a feeling of estrangement. Yet, this did not lead to any form of class-based comradeship. In fact, it appears that a more primeval sentiment – against interracial sexual relationships – played a vital role in the unrest at Causeway Green.

Racist patriarchal attitudes seem to have been important causes of the affray. Several Poles admitted that, ‘they resented Jamaicans taking young girls into the hostel’. ⁶⁹ This feeling was shared by many of the locals, who also stereotyped white women who displayed an interest in black men as having loose morals, and stereotyped black men as criminal and oversexed. Local papers were full of quotes such as, ‘It seems that girls of 14 or 15 who hang about the hostel at night are the cause of most of the fights. It is a pity that something can’t be done about them.’ Or, ‘It is not safe for our wives and children to be out after dark.’ ⁷⁰ Interracial relationships were a festering sore and, three days after this story, there was a report of a stabbing incident involving a mixed union at the Brockworth hostel in Gloucester. ⁷¹

The ‘mixing of the races’, of course, did not apply when whites from Eastern Europe were involved. Drawing on parliamentary debates from the time, Kay and Miles point out that the government had a very different view of relationships between displaced persons from the continent and local people, compared to those between West Indians and white Britons. The ‘replenishment of stock’ was an important reason leading to the Eastern Europeans’ entry:

Nor was their role to be an exclusively economic one. A falling birth-rate and increasing emigration led to arguments for ‘an infusion of vigorous new blood from overseas’ to replenish stock and ensure future generations. On both counts the displaced persons were seen to fit the bill. They were variously described as ‘ideal immigrants’, as ‘first-class people, who, if let into this country, would be of great benefit to our stock’ and would refresh, enrich, and strengthen ‘our island population’. In particular their ‘love of freedom’, as demonstrated by their preference to remain in the West rather than return to ‘conditions which were not free’, was seen to constitute the ‘spirit and stuff of which we can make Britons’. ⁷²

What the Causeway Green episode, and the agitation around workers’ hostels in the 1940s, throw into relief is the essential contradiction that, for black people, ‘it was their labour that was wanted, not their presence’. ⁷³ Throughout the whole discussion about hostels, numbers and quotas runs the tension between the need for labour (of whatever hue) for rebuilding firms, factories and services and the worry about social unrest if concentrations of black people were, or were seen to be, too large. The idea of imposing a ceiling on the supposed acceptable number of ‘coloureds’, presumably to meet individuals’ tolerance levels, was later to be replicated in the 1962 Commonwealth Immigration Act. It was reiterated in the 1965 White Paper’s issuing of quotas of vouchers for different skill levels among New Commonwealth workers. And it made its mark in education policy in 1965, concerning the proportion of ‘coloured children’ to be allowed in any one school, leading to the pernicious policy of ‘bussing’ Asian children from places such as Southall to schools far from their neighbourhoods.

What emerges from this whole debate is the deep hypocrisy that characterised British ‘race’ policy from the period when countries gained independence until the late 1960s, when anti-discrimination legislation was forced, after agitation from political black organisers and their allies, into statute. The natural reaction of government ministers and civil servants was a benevolent paternalism impregnated with a strong dose of ‘commonsense’ racism, born of colonial distrust of colour. They were never to square up to racism. Instead, as in this case, they ‘problematised’ the victims of racism: the Jamaicans. They were the ones expected to move; there was never an expectation that the Poles, who had started the trouble, would be asked to go. But, at the same time, with an eye to the New Commonwealth, officialdom was worried that its actions might be attributed to ‘colour prejudice’, for these were, after all, British citizens. ⁷⁴ Hence, the contortions inherent in attesting to liberal values while discriminating in effect – the dilemma identified by Gunnar Myrdal in his 1944 race study of the US.

The reaction of the state, particularly through the NSHC, local council and police, and supported by the residents’ committees (united, as all these bodies were, around a wish to remove the Jamaicans), served to legitimise the rioters and, hence, racism itself. The press, too, although slightly more sympathetic (a point highlighted, and grumbled about, by the NSHC), ⁷⁵ also failed to take an impartial position. Press descriptions of the events as ‘racial riots’, implying a clash of two equally matched sides, are clearly problematic, since, by their own acknowledgement, the disturbances largely consisted of Polish residents attacking an outnumbered (by 4:1) group of Jamaicans. Government and media might have argued that they merely reflected public opinion, but it appears, in hindsight, that it was these institutions that set the tone of popular racism – and of the reception or rejection of the black newcomers.

What remains unexamined is the way that early policies, such as those inflicted on black workers using government hostels, may account in some very specific ways for the development (or non-development) of the black centres we take for granted today. The Ministry of Labour initially accommodated the Windrush immigrants in air raid shelters in Clapham South in London. The closest labour exchange to the shelters was on Coldharbour Lane in Brixton. This was where many of the Jamaicans went for their documents and permits, and here they were not run out of town. ⁷⁶ They were to make it their own, with (black) Brixton now a cultural and economic hub of south London.